Earn Double Points for ABAP Contributions in March

Savor the ABAP flavor in March! ABAP has been named “Topic of the Month” on SDN, meaning that article, blog, and code sample submissions related to ABAP development receive twice their normal points value throughout the month of March. This is a great opportunity to explore the new Wiki area on SAP Community Network, which includes the even newerCode Gallery. Last month, my colleague https://weblogs.sdn.sap.com/pub/u/251739350 [original link is broken][original link is broken][original link is broken][original link is broken] of the SDN/BPX Community Collaboration team unveiled this new space for submitting code snippets and tutorials. Publish your stuff right away, by yourself, and get rewarded – but the community has a say, so don’t forget to debug, spell check, and do whatever else you need to do to quality-assure your code and earn your “street cred.” Gali can probably explain it better – check out Unveiling of… The Wiki Code Snippet Gallery for more about the Code Gallery. You can also refer to the How to Contribute link at the top of SDN to submit an article, post a blog, or learn more about how to contribute. For more information about our points system, see the Contributor Recognition Program FAQs. Who knows, maybe you’ll even turn in the next SAPlink – (I know you know SAPlink, the application that reigned supreme at two Demo Jams in ’06) – and be the one shaking Shai Agassi’s hand this fall at SAP TechEd ’07! P.S. And for those of you who prefer the taste of Java, you’ll have your chance soon enough….

I have just finished up three customer exits in QPL1/XQPL, XSQM, and XMBC and one QM BADI (SAP-delivered INSPECTIONLOT_UPDATE.)

The first main thing I’ve learned from this is that the process of doing complex exits and BADI’s is much much simpler than you would think from looking at the documentation on line or the BC425 course manual. Particularly the BADI stuff – if you just go into SE18/19 and “do what comes naturally”, you’ll have an active working BADI in less time than it takes to read chapter 7 of the BC425 manual or the stuff in “Changing the SAP Standard”.

The second main thing I’ve learned this week is that SAP really ought to tell the OOPS/JAVA community to “stuff it” and decide to call an “interface” what it really is: a “master-class”.

The third main thing I’ve learned this week is that R3 is really only as “locked-down” as a customer wants it to be. For a customer like my current client, who really wants to make SAP work for the good of all, the exits and BADI’s in R3 are proving to be as important, if not more important than what SAP-delivers and what gets written as pure custom stuff.

So for all three of the above reasons, I’m glad to know that March is ABAP month. Even without WDA, ABAP is still a very exciting place to live if you’re working for the right kind of client who really wants to make R3 “dance”.

Oops – I guess I just blogged without looking … well … at least no one can assign points to a reply … so I haven’t “fallen off the wagon” … these thoughts don’t count “officially”!